"Probably the wife or daughter of a small laird [...] but her rompishness and ill breeding indicate no great experience of polite society. She was [in 1766] separated from her husband and her three children, and her husband, who was said to have used her badly, was living with another woman. [...] She was young, lively, black-haired, reckless [...]"1
- 1[TEY], p. 290-291
Boswell began a secret relationship with the woman referred to only as Mrs. Dodds after he had met her in the spa town of Moffat in the spring of 1766. She took lodgings in Edinburgh in June of that year, and their relationship continued for more than a year.
In February 1767 he took lodgings for her at Borthwick's Close just off the Edinburgh High Street. Two days later, however, he got news that "[s]he had taken other house, so resolved to give up yours."1
- 1Journal entries February 4, 5 and 7, 1767, see [BSW]